The hill splits Plumstead in two
We clean end-of-tenancy properties across Plumstead (SE18 1QR) to the inventory clerk’s standard, priced by the size of the home, with a free re-clean inside 48 hours if the agent challenges the work. That is the short version. The longer version starts with the slope, because the ground rising from the Thames toward Shooters Hill sorted Plumstead’s housing into two kinds, and the two kinds fail a check-out for different reasons.
The Royal Arsenal sat just to the west, and when it grew through the 1880s Plumstead grew with it. Builders ran rows of two-up two-down terraces across the low ground near the river to house the Arsenal workforce, and that is the dense Victorian grid you still walk through near the station today. The earlier Burrage New Town, laid out from the 1850s on land that belonged to Queen’s College, Oxford, ran south from Woolwich Arsenal station toward Plumstead Common Road and gave the area its first proper estate. Streets like Maxey Road and Pattison Road went up on the lower slopes a little before that.
Climb the hill and the houses change. The land rising toward Plumstead Common and on up to Shooters Hill was developed later and smarter, with bigger bay-fronted terraces and villas built for clerks and managers rather than fitters. Most of those larger houses have since been split into flats, two or three to a building, and that is the second archetype we clean. A converted upper flat on Crescent Road or up near the Common cleans nothing like a little river-level terrace, and the price reflects which one you are handing back.
There is a third kind, and it matters because the borough built a lot of it. Post-war council estates fill in the gaps between the Victorian streets, and the ex-local-authority flats and maisonettes that came out of right-to-buy are a steady part of our local work. They are plainer to clean than a period house, with fewer mouldings to dust, but the kitchens and bathrooms are often older and the scale on the taps takes longer to shift.
The grid of streets between the station and Plumstead High Street is the heart of the old terrace stock. Names like Maxey Road, Pattison Road, Burrage Road and Crescent Road run in long Victorian rows, most of them now split into upper and lower flats, and the gardens out the back are small and walled. The High Street itself, with its parade of shops and the market end, is the dividing line: north of it the ground falls toward the river and the streets are flatter, south of it the climb to the Common begins. Knowing which side of the High Street a property sits tells us a fair amount about what we are walking into before we get there.
So when a tenant rings and says “it’s a two-bed in Plumstead”, the first thing we ask is where, and what sort. A river-level terrace, a hillside conversion and an ex-council maisonette are three different jobs, and the clerk holds each to its own check-in photos.
A river-level terrace, a hillside conversion and an ex-council maisonette are three different jobs, and the clerk holds each to its own check-in photos.
None of this is a reason to panic. It is a reason to know what you are handing back before the clerk does. Under the deposit rules your money sits in a protected scheme until both sides agree the deductions, so a disputed cleaning charge can hold the whole return up for weeks. Getting the clean right the first time is simply the quickest way to see the deposit again.
The Victorian terrace handover, room by room
The Arsenal-era terrace is the property we clean most around here, so it is worth setting out what one actually involves. Our team arrives with a printed 57-point agent-approved checklist and works the house room by room, top to bottom, ticking as they go. The list exists because the clerk checks against a list of their own, and matching theirs is how you pass. Nothing on it is exotic. It is the full set, done properly, including the parts a normal clean skips.
Old houses carry detail that newer flats do not, and the detail is where a clean gets queried. Deep skirting boards, picture rails, dado rails and moulded door surrounds all hold a felt of dust that a quick wipe rides straight over. Original timber floors have gaps that trap grit. Cast-iron radiators have fins and backs that a clerk will run a finger behind. We do the lot, because leaving the tops of the door frames is exactly the sort of thing that turns into a deduction.
The windows are their own job in a terrace like this. A lot of the river-level houses still have their old timber sash windows, and the runs, the sills and the glazing bars all need doing rather than a swipe across the pane. Where a landlord has put in modern casements instead, the frames and the trickle vents still get cleaned inside as standard. We reach the outsides on the lower floors with water-fed poles where the inventory asks for clean external glass.
The kitchen is where the time goes. The oven comes apart, the racks and the inner door glass are degreased separately, the hob and the splashback are brought back, and the extractor filter is cleaned rather than left greasy. Cupboards and drawers are wiped inside and out, fronts and handles included, and the gap behind the kickboard gets cleared. Fridges and freezers are done inside and defrosted if you have switched them off. In an older fitted kitchen the grease has usually crept further than people think, onto the wall above the units and the side of the tall cupboard, so we clean wider than the splashback alone.
The bathroom is about the scale. South-east London water is hard, and the chalk in it leaves a film on glass, chrome and tile grout that builds within weeks, so a shower screen that was clear when you moved in looks cloudy by the time you leave even with regular wiping. Clerks in SE18 know it and look for it first. Our team carries the descaler that actually shifts the build-up rather than the spray-and-hope approach, and the limescale on the taps, the showerhead and the grout comes off properly. The toilet is cleaned around the base and behind, the extractor vent is dusted, and the sealant lines are scrubbed.
The ex-council flats need a slightly different hand. The mouldings are simpler, so there is less dusting detail, but the fittings have usually had longer lives. Older enamel baths hold a dull ring that a domestic spray will not lift, dated worktops and tiling carry years of grease in the grout, and the metal-framed windows on some of the post-war blocks have runs and hinges that trap dirt. The communal stair outside your front door is not yours to clean, but the inside of the flat is judged just as hard as a period house, and the check-in photos are usually just as detailed. We treat them the same way: the full checklist, top to bottom, and a straight word if a fitting is worn past what a clean can fix.
The pass rate is the figure that matters. We clear the check-out first time on 97% of jobs, and on the rare property that gets flagged, the 48-hour re-clean guarantee means we come back free if you call within three days of the report. That promise is part of why agents keep us on their lists. We are on the books of 300+ letting agents and have helped tenants recover £1.2m in deposits that would otherwise have gone on cleaning deductions, and most of that was saved by getting the property right the first time rather than arguing about it after the keys went back.
The clean is not charged by the hour. You pay by the size of the property, the team stays until the checklist is finished, and nobody clock-watches.
Plumstead sits inside Greenwich selective licensing
Here is the thing that catches Plumstead landlords and sharers out, and it is worth getting right because it changes the balance of a deposit dispute. Plumstead is one of the few parts of the Royal Borough of Greenwich that sits inside the council’s selective licensing scheme. A standard let here needs a licence. A couple of miles west in somewhere like Kidbrooke, the same flat would not.
The borough runs three layers of private-rented licensing, and Plumstead is caught by the strictest of the three. Greenwich’s selective licensing scheme runs from 1 October 2022 to 30 September 2027 and applies in five named wards: Woolwich Riverside, Woolwich Common, Shooters Hill, Plumstead Common and Plumstead Glyndon. Two of those five are Plumstead wards, and a third, Shooters Hill, takes in the streets climbing the southern slope. So most rented homes in Plumstead, including ordinary single-household lets and small two-sharer flats, need a selective licence from the council.
Above that sit the two HMO schemes, which run borough-wide and so cover Plumstead as well. The additional HMO scheme came in on 1 January 2024 and catches smaller shared homes where three or four people from more than two households live together and share a kitchen, bathroom or toilet. Mandatory HMO licensing sits on top, for any property let to five or more people forming two or more households who share those facilities. A licence is not optional. The council can fine a landlord up to £30,000 for renting out an unlicensed home, and a tenant can apply for a rent repayment order.
- Selective licence
- Required for ordinary single-household and small-sharer lets in five Greenwich wards, two of them in Plumstead plus Shooters Hill. The scheme runs to 30 September 2027.
- Additional HMO licence
- A borough-wide Greenwich scheme, live since 1 January 2024, for smaller shared homes of three or four people from more than two households sharing a kitchen, bathroom or toilet.
- Mandatory HMO licence
- Required anywhere in the borough for a home let to five or more people in two or more households who share facilities.
- Check-in inventory
- The clerk’s photographed record of the home’s condition and cleanliness at the start of the tenancy. Your end-of-tenancy clean is judged against it, not against a fresh idea of clean.
Why does a cleaning company raise any of this? Because the cleanliness clause in your inventory does not care which licence applies, but the balance of power in a dispute often does. A landlord who let an unlicensed home in a Plumstead ward is on weaker ground if they try to dock you for cleaning, and a tenant who knows that argues from a stronger position. We are not your licensing adviser, and you should check the council’s address lookup for your exact street, but it is the sort of local detail worth knowing before you hand back the keys.
For sharers there is a practical knock-on too. A licensed HMO is often let room by room, which can mean a check-out per room rather than one clean handover, with the kitchen and bathrooms judged as shared space. We have done plenty of those in the bigger hillside conversions. It pays to agree who cleans what before anyone moves their boxes, because the last sharer left in the flat tends to inherit whatever nobody else claimed.
What an end of tenancy clean costs here
Prices are fixed by the size of the property, quoted up front, and they are the full price rather than a teaser that climbs once the team is in your hallway. For end-of-tenancy cleaning a studio is £156, a one-bed is £207, a two-bed is £243, a three-bed is £339, and a four-bed is £425. The smaller river-level terraces and the converted flats up the hill mostly fall in the one and two-bed bands, so £207 and £243 cover the bulk of what we do in SE18.
If you would rather buy time than a whole-property clean, say because you have done most of it yourself and only want the oven and the bathroom taken off your hands, by-the-hour cleaning is £30 per cleaner. That suits a small flat where you just want the worst jobs gone. It does not carry the end-of-tenancy guarantee, though, because we have not worked the full checklist.
Carpets are priced on their own and cleaned by hot-water extraction: £36 a bedroom, £43 for a living room, or £115 for a whole two-bed done together. A lot of the older terraces have stripped floorboards downstairs and carpet only on the stairs and bedrooms, so the per-room rate usually works out kinder than a flat fee. Oven cleaning, booked separately, is £77 for a single, £110 for a double, and £114 for a range. Our oven cleaning and carpet cleaning pages set out what each one includes.
We do not run discount theatre. We would sooner quote one honest number than dangle a cheap headline and then add for the oven, the scale and the carpets when the team arrives. You get the figure before anything is booked.
Getting to you: the station, the buses and the climb
Plumstead is straightforward for us to reach, which keeps your slot punctual. Plumstead station sits on the North Kent line and is run by Southeastern, with Thameslink services calling too, so trains run west toward Woolwich, Greenwich and London Bridge and east toward Dartford. The platforms drop below road level and the old gabled station buildings stand up on the overbridge, which is a clue to the railway history here: this was once where the Royal Arsenal’s own internal railway joined the main line.
The Elizabeth line did not come to Plumstead itself, but it landed one stop west at Woolwich, a short hop or a walk down the hill, and that has pulled the whole area closer to Canary Wharf and the West End. There is a more direct link than most people realise: the Elizabeth line’s big maintenance depot was built on the old railway land at Plumstead, so the trains that run under the Thames are stabled and serviced on your doorstep even though they do not stop here.
Buses do a lot of the local lifting, especially up the slope. The 99, 122, 244, 380 and 472 thread between the station, Plumstead Common, Woolwich and Abbey Wood, and they matter to us because parking varies sharply with the gradient. Down on the flat near the station the terraces have controlled bays and not much room. Up toward the Common and the steeper streets running to Shooters Hill it can be tighter still, and a van full of kit does not want to be circling. Tell us where the nearest bay or loading spot is when you book and we sort access in advance.
If your home backs onto Plumstead Common or Winn’s Common you have one of the better outlooks in the borough. The Common has some of the most varied ground of any London open space, with wooded ravines, scattered puddingstone boulders and an ancient burial mound over on Winn’s Common, and the Slade is an old ravine cut by glacial meltwater at the end of the last Ice Age. The Old Mill on Old Mill Road is the local landmark, its remains built into the pub of the same name. None of this changes how we clean a flat, but the ground-floor windows facing all that green pick up more pollen and damp than a sealed street would, which a clerk will spot on the sills.
We work seven days a week, weekends included, at no extra charge. End-of-tenancy timing is tight by its nature, with the check-out, the incoming tenants and the keys all landing in the same day or two, so we keep Saturday and Sunday slots open for exactly that. If your tenancy sits over the boundary in Woolwich or out toward Abbey Wood, we cover both, and the wider hub for the borough is our end of tenancy cleaning across Greenwich page.
End of tenancy, deep clean, or a few hours
People use the terms as if they mean the same thing, and they do not. A regular clean keeps a lived-in home ticking over. A deep clean goes harder at a home you are staying in, pulling out the build-up a weekly clean leaves behind. An end-of-tenancy clean is its own job, scoped against the check-in inventory so the home goes back at the standard it came in at, which is why it follows the 57-point list and carries the re-clean guarantee.
The practical difference is who is judging it. A deep clean has to please you. An end-of-tenancy clean has to please a clerk holding photographs, so the inside of the oven, the descaling, the cupboard interiors and the gaps behind appliances are all standard rather than extras. If you are staying put and just want the place freshened, our deep cleaning service is the better fit and a little cheaper. If you are moving out and the deposit is on the line, you want the end-of-tenancy clean every time.
One more distinction is worth making in an old house. A clerk can fail a clean over a single missed line, so an end-of-tenancy clean is really about completeness, where a deep clean is about depth. The terraces here have a lot of lines to miss, which is the whole argument for the full checklist.
Sofas are the grey area in between. A fair few of the hillside conversions are let furnished, and a fabric sofa that came clean on the inventory has to go back clean, which a hoover alone will not always manage after a couple of years of daily use. Our upholstery cleaning uses the same hot-water extraction as the carpets and lifts the marks a vacuum leaves behind. If your tenancy includes the landlord’s furniture, mention it when you book so we bring the right machine.
Booking a clean in SE18
Booking is quick. Ring 0333 555 2076 or email [email protected], tell us the property size, the postcode and your move-out date, and we give you a fixed price and a slot. If you are not sure whether the box room makes it a three-bed, or whether your place counts as a studio or a one-bed, just describe it and we will work it out with you.
We will ask three things: how many bedrooms and bathrooms, whether the home will be empty or still part-furnished when we clean, and how parking works on your street. Those three answers let us send the right size team with the right kit and avoid the day-of surprises that make jobs overrun. If you want carpets or the oven done at the same time, say so then and we fold it into the one visit and the one price.
After the clean, keep your receipt and the before-and-after photos we can provide, because if the clerk does raise something, that paperwork plus the 48-hour guarantee is how we put it right at no cost to you. Most tenants never need it. It is there for the one home in twenty where a clerk finds a line to quibble.
We have cleaned Plumstead for years, the river-level terraces and the conversions up the Common both. We know which streets are a nightmare to park on, which agents send the strictest clerks, and how hard the water bites in the bathrooms here. That is the difference between a clean that looks done and one that actually passes.
Plumstead end of tenancy questions
How much is end of tenancy cleaning in Plumstead?
It is priced by property size: £156 for a studio, £207 for a one-bed, £243 for a two-bed, £339 for a three-bed and £425 for a four-bed. The price is fixed and quoted before you book, with no day-of add-ons.
Do you clean the old Arsenal-era terraces near the station?
Yes, they are most of what we do here. The Victorian two-up two-down terraces have their own traps, such as deep skirting and picture rails that hold dust, timber sash windows that need the runs cleaned, and hard-water scale in the bathroom, and we clean to the inventory clerk’s check-in standard so the house goes back as it started.
Does Plumstead need a selective property licence?
Usually yes. Greenwich runs selective licensing in five wards, two of which are in Plumstead plus Shooters Hill, so most ordinary lets here need a selective licence. The scheme runs from 1 October 2022 to 30 September 2027, and a landlord can be fined up to £30,000 for letting an unlicensed home.
Does the Greenwich HMO scheme cover Plumstead?
Yes. The borough’s additional HMO licensing scheme is borough-wide and has run since 1 January 2024, covering smaller shared homes of three or four people from more than two households. Larger shares of five or more need a mandatory HMO licence anywhere in the borough.
What does your end of tenancy clean include?
The full 57-point agent checklist: oven taken apart and degreased, full bathroom descale, cupboards inside and out, skirting, picture rails, sockets, internal windows, radiators and the gaps behind appliances. Carpets and upholstery are hoovered, and we clean the inside of the windows as standard.
Is the cleaning charged by the hour?
No. End of tenancy is a fixed price by property size, and the team stays until the checklist is finished. We also offer by-the-hour cleaning at £30 per cleaner if you only want certain jobs done, but that does not carry the re-clean guarantee.
What is the 48-hour guarantee?
If the inventory clerk or agent flags the clean within 48 hours of the check-out, we come back and put it right free of charge. It covers the agreed checklist on the property we cleaned.
Will this clean get my full deposit back?
The cleaning part of it, yes, which is where most deductions come from. We pass the check-out first time on 97% of jobs and have helped tenants recover £1.2m in deposits that would otherwise have gone on cleaning charges. We cannot cover damage or unpaid rent, only the cleaning standard.
Do you clean carpets and ovens as well?
Yes, either as part of the visit or on their own. Carpets are £36 a bedroom, £43 a living room or £115 for a whole two-bed by hot-water extraction; ovens are £77 single, £110 double and £114 for a range.
Can you reach the steep streets up toward Shooters Hill?
Yes. We cover the whole of Plumstead, from the flat near the station up to the Common and the slopes toward Shooters Hill. Parking is tighter on the hill, so we just ask where the nearest bay or loading spot is when you book.
Can you come at the weekend?
Yes, we work seven days a week including weekends at no extra cost. End-of-tenancy timing is tight, so we keep Saturday and Sunday slots open for move-out days.
Do I need to be there during the clean?
No, as long as we can get access. Many tenants leave a key or arrange access through the agent, and we lock up after. An empty home actually cleans better because we can reach the floors and skirting the clerk checks.
How long does an end of tenancy clean take?
A one or two-bed flat is usually a few hours; a three or four-bed terrace takes most of a day. Because we price by property rather than time, the team stays until the checklist is signed off rather than stopping on a clock.
How does deposit protection work if there is a dispute?
Your deposit is held in a government-approved scheme, and if you and the landlord disagree the money stays protected until it is resolved through the scheme’s adjudication. Keeping our receipt and photos helps if a cleaning charge is ever raised.
For the legal background, the government’s tenancy deposit protection guidance sets out the 30-day rule and the three approved schemes, Shelter’s advice on cleaning deductions explains the standard you have to return a home to, and the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 sets the framework for tenancies now that fixed terms are being phased out.